We all know that the archaeologists working at Waun Mawn know nothing about the local geology -- but it's rather intriguing that they seem to know very little about the local archaeology either.....
I'm reliably informed by the underground network that they are now claiming to have "discovered" -- earlier this year -- an embanked circle near Gernos Fach, at grid ref SN077345. It's a bit like Columbus discovering America, which the locals had known about for some considerable time. Anyway, I'm pretty sure this feature was mentioned by Dyfed Archaeology many years ago, and I have described it on this blog in 2014, 2016 and 2018, as well as mentioning it in my Waun Mawn article.
https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2021/03/those-damaged-ring-cairns.html
https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2014/05/an-undiscovered-ring-cairn-near-gernos.html
https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2018/05/waun-mawn-destroyed-ring-cairns.html
https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2016/08/gernos-fach-ring-cairn.html
The members of the digging team know all about these posts, since some of them, at least, follow my blog and have read my Researchgate article on Waun Mawn, published last year.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/345177590_Waun_Mawn_and_the_search_for_Proto-_Stonehenge
Dave Maynard has also flown his drone over it, and I was happy to publish this excellent image from his collection:
Whether we call it a ring cairn or an embanked circle or a "destroyed embanked stone circle" is neither here nor there, but it's a bit irritating when MPP and his colleagues choose to ignore previous work and claim credit for "discovering" things. But their record in such matters is not exactly exemplary..........
Anyway, I'm informed that there will be a dig at this Gernos Fach site in the coming digging season (Aug 29th - Sept 17th), and it will be interesting to see what comes out of it. I'm delighted that this site will be excavated, but make no mistake -- this dig is really all about Stonehenge. No doubt the diggers will be looking for stone sockets on the embankment, and will be looking to extend the hypothesis that there was more than one dismantled stone circle hereabouts, from which stones were hauled off to Salisbury Plain. This embanked site is a nice insurance policy for the diggers at the Waun Mawn "lost circle"-- the evidence there for a dismantled circle is unconvincing, to put it mildly, and a few more holes in the ground, interpreted as empty stone sockets, would come in very handy indeed.
6 comments:
I recall watching and contributing to the 2020 Pembs. Coast Archaeology Day, 7th November 2020. I submitted an an 'Advance Question' which fell upon Farmer Mike's stony ground i e. wouldn't countenance talk of glacial movement, said " that boat doesn't float anymore". It's all on a YouTube video. He did say he wants to do a pollen analysis project " in these upland areas" whatever that meant, but so far he hasn't attracted the needed Grant". Like Mike, for the most part words fail me regarding his ostrich - like approach towards decent questions etc .....
It's a classic response from a closed mind. Twenty-five years ago, somebody told him that glacial transport of the bluestones was impossible, and he chose to believe that. HH Thomas said that too, a century ago, but if you look at the consensus among geomorphologists and glaciologists who have studied the Irish Sea Glacier and UK glacial limits generally, the weight of opinion is that glacial transport was certainly quite possible. The evidence supports that. MMP is not interested in any of that. He chooses to believe one or two of his mates, because it suits him to do so. The evidence of glacial transport is staring him in the face -- the 43 bluestones at Stonehenge, and the related debris, constitute (and look like) a typical glacial erratic assemblage of boulders from many different locations. They are not pretty elongated pillars, carefully chosen from quarrying sites. I looked at the arguments beck in 2014: https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-discrediting-of-glacial-transport.html
To change the metaphor from boats that don't float: Mike Parker Pearson, Rob Ixer and other collaborators, one day soon, it is inevitable that your chickens will come home to roost.
Quite so. Not to mention white elephants and red herrings in china shops, and wild geese chasing millstones ........
.....somewhere over an UCL rainbow, wearing rose - tinted spectacles, a pied piper strolls backwards, looking at camera, despatched off a Pembrokeshire cliff.....oh dear, whoops! there goes a ruling hypothesis....
Neil Oliver does that all the time. It's a miracle he has survived for so long.......... but I don't wish it on anybody to fall off a cliff. Only metaphorically, of course.....
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